Book review: To Kill A Mockingbird

Authored by Harper Lee in 1960 and winner of the Pulitzer prize.

I read this book thirty years ago and this past month.  My eighth-grade daughter received it as an assignment, much as I did.  I did not remember the plot at all, which is surprising, because this is a great book!

Set in fictional Southern Maycomb in the 1930s, Ms. Lee narrates from the point of view of an adolescent girl, Scout.  I recall reading an essay by Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, who said the writer's first step is to determine the voice with which to tell the story:  first-person, third-person omniscient, etc.  Rhodes authored The Donner Party from the point of view of various journal entries from the doomed travelers.

The author is playful with her language and one can hear the quaint, "backwards" Southern mannerisms and speech patterns, and some of the people of Maycomb county were low-life bigots, but the author plainly respects her characters.  I finished my read with a really warm feeling for the main characters:  so full of goodness.